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History curriculum and textbooks, as a key mechanism of constructing collective memory, play a critical role in shaping national, social, and cultural imaginations of the young. This paper analyses history textbooks in Taiwan during the martial law period (1950-1987) to explore narratives about Taiwan and examines the ways in which those narratives as collective memory created particular images of Taiwan. The analysis indicates that history textbooks delineated two threads of narrative, one is a "Sinicisation" narrative, namely Chinese colonisation, and the other is Chinese restoration narrative. The "Sinicisation" narrative constructed particular collective memory about Taiwan being of Chinese descent and an inheritor of Chinese culture, "lost" and "restored" by China after World War II. In the narrative of restoration, Taiwan was imagined as reborn to be the model child of Chinese descent that was obligated to emancipate all Chinese compatriots from Communism and to ultimately realise the goal of Chinese reunification. These narratives served for emancipating Taiwan from Japanese colonisation and constructed particular collective memory that "Sinicised" Taiwan for Chinese restoration. The image of Taiwan as Chinese descent, identified with Chinese culture, has endured to the present and continue to shape imaginations and discourses about Taiwan in the present.

This study examines localisation endeavours in contemporary Taiwan to explore the history of the Taiwanese localisation movement as a way of reimagining meanings of "Taiwaneseness" constructed under different historical circumstances. It focuses on the "xiangtu" (nativist) literature movement in colonial Taiwan in the early 1930s that was initiated by Taiwanese intellectuals to create "real" Taiwanese literature on Taiwan and for the Taiwanese masses. Besides being a social education initiative to improve Taiwanese mass literacy, the "xiangtu" literature movement was a localisation effort to reform Taiwanese language and preserve Taiwanese culture under Japanese occupation. The reform discourse made a turn towards specifically Taiwanese linguistic and cultural traditions, instead of pursuing modern Japanese and Chinese language and culture, which were the then available cultural impulses in colonial Taiwan. Local Taiwanese language and folk culture were essential curricular materials in the social education agenda that created particular meanings of "Taiwaneseness" for colonial Taiwan.

This historical study reflects on history curriculum debates over the last 20 years in Taiwan. To open up possibilities for contemporary Taiwanese to rethink themselves in terms of national culture and subjectivity, this paper explores the construction of Taiwanese subjectivity in the past. It focuses on the history of Taiwan under Japanese occupation as a key issue in history curriculum debates. Particularly, it examines language issues in the 1920s, an important theme in the histories of the formation of Taiwanese consciousness, ideology, and cultural nationalism during the Japanese colonial period. Rather than addressing issues of identity (national or cultural), identifying who Taiwanese really were, or looking for Chinese or Taiwanese consciousness, this study explores how meanings of "Taiwanese" in the 1920s under Japanese occupation were constructed in the discourse of language reform for civilisation. The analysis of the New Culture Movement discourse suggests that the classical Chinese language of "Hànwén" as a valuable cultural resource and flexible linguistic instrument played an essential role in constituting Taiwanese subjectivities that shaped Taiwanese practices of the self for distinctive civilisation.